1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to instant messaging and chat systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real time communications systems provide a substantial enhancement over more traditional, asynchronous communications systems. Electronic mail delivery systems, the prototypical asynchronous communications systems, in its time represented a giant leap forward in respect to global interpersonal communications. Prior to electronic mail, individuals primarily communicated via telephone, facsimile and post. With electronic mail, however, individuals expect near instant delivery of text, and even imagery, audio and video, without incurring the delay typical of the postal system, or the expense associated with telephony and fax technologies.
Despite the ubiquity of electronic mail, asynchronous communications systems lack several elements common in the realm of real time communications systems. In particular, the seemingly instant delivery of a message cannot be experienced in the world of electronic mail. In a real-time society, the minor latencies associated with electronic mail often cannot be suitable for the task at hand where a real-time conversation will be required in addressing a problem or performing a collaborative task. More importantly, often the feel and nature of a “conversation” as it is known to human beings only can be approximated through real time communications where the participants to a conversation feel the spontaneity of an exchange of ideas, much as is the case in a live, face-to-face conversation.
The recent rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of synchronous, real-time collaboration able to fulfill the real-time communicative requirements of the modern computing participant. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in real-time in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of technologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These technologies include several human-to-human collaborative environments such as instant messaging and persistent chat rooms.
In an instant messaging or persistent chat room environment, a messaging session can be requested by a collaborator, and upon acceptance of the request, a human-to-human collaborative session can be established in which real-time or near real-time messages can be exchanged as between the collaborators party to the session. The exchange of messages can continue until the session is terminated. Additional requests for collaborative sessions can result in the establishment of different environments which can execute concurrently albeit separately from one another. As it will be recognized, managing multiple collaborative sessions at once can become more difficult as the number of sessions increases.
Hence, as human-to-human collaborative environments, instant messaging and chat room technologies provide an efficient and useful method for personal and business communications. Inefficiencies can be introduced, however, when a user receives several requests to establish collaborative sessions for different collaborative environments. In this regard, determining whether or not to permit an interruption to engage in a collaborative session often relates to the level of urgency for a particular collaborative session. Accordingly, prioritization schemes have been developed which prioritize incoming messages across multiple collaborative environments.